…in the LA Times (free registration required) against “Bush’s Empty Rhetoric on Democracy”:

“Bush and his supporters act as if anti-Americanism is simply the necessary and worthwhile price we pay for our principled advocacy of freedom everywhere. The truth is that anti-Americanism has prevented us from consistently advocating democracy throughout the world. And the inconstancy of our belief in democracy — which the citizens of pro-American dictatorships everywhere have noticed and exploited — makes anti-Americanism all the worse. There may be a way out of this dilemma, but preaching the universality of democracy and practicing otherwise is surely not it.”

Of course, this is hardly the first administration to play power-politics under the guise of “promoting democracy.” The story of the Cold War era is awash with the names of brutal despots and murderous regimes who invoked the sacred mantle of anti-Communism, and received oodles of US support in return.

It’s probably not “our freedom” that anti-American troublemakers loathe, but something else.